Chapter 2592: Giant Mask and Silver-White Threads
The Space Defense Barrier flickered open, but it only blocked the sound of the wind for a moment. The next second, something flying towards him appeared inside the barrier, and Xu Huo’s knife responded in kind. With two quick consecutive slices, a clatter followed by a thud was heard as something hit the ground.
He was standing in a room covered with dust cloths, quite spacious, with large windows a few meters away. Although there was no lighting outside, under the faint daylight, the room wasn’t completely dark, and he could see just fine. What fell to the ground was undoubtedly a ghost face mask sliced into pieces.
He used the tip of his knife to prod it, and upon inspection, the inside of the mask didn’t have any "veins" growing out—it just looked like an ordinary mask.
Since his personal interface wasn’t sealed, Xu Huo took out a small box, had the Girl in the painting store the mask inside while he dealt with three more masks appearing from various places.
The masks moved quickly and often appeared suddenly from spaces, making them hard to guard against. However, Xu Huo could detect the slight spatial power fluctuations when they appeared. Coupled with the repeatedly activatable Space Defense Barrier, Mechanical Suit Set, Psyche Force Materialization, and Black Blade, harvesting them wasn’t a problem.
It was merely upon exiting the backstage of this theater that the Girl in the painting gathered over a dozen masks, but soon noticed their numbers dwindling. It wasn’t because they came alive and ran away; they directly vanished from the box.
Thus, Xu Huo simply tossed the masks into the luggage compartment.
This made the Girl in the painting quite upset. She had initially enjoyed picking up masks because she wanted to play by making a patchwork cloak out of the broken ones.
In the theater’s auditorium lay several headless corpses. Judging by the wounds on their necks, it was as though some force had directly popped their heads off, somewhat different from the situation outside the restricted area.
Outside the restricted area, the masks don’t usually just decapitate. They control the person they cover, transferring targets through getting the host killed, but the masks inside the restricted area... are much stronger.
The masks had no interest in the Girl in the painting, so the task of looting the bodies was left to her.
Among the people dead in the theater were two players, the rest were ordinary residents of Xia City.
The Girl in the painting stripped their terminals along with any prop instruments and stuffed them into her backpack, then picked up a box of food, trailing behind Xu Huo.
Since there could be changes at any moment in the restricted area, it’s best to carry food on you.
With every step Xu Huo took, he faced attacks. The masks seemed to have an endless supply, spawning one after another, appearing suddenly from any place or angle. Just as he was comfortably making his way to the theater exit, a giant demon head mask suddenly dropped down from above covering an area nearly ten meters wide, with silver-white threads shooting out from inside!
Xu Huo furrowed his brow slightly, ducked swiftly, and leaped to the center of the theater while releasing a barrier device as a shield behind him. The compressed metal shield expanded behind him, successfully blocking the silver-white threads, but in the instant it was hit, subtle cracks appeared on the metal surface!
Witnessing this made one’s eyelids twitch, but the next second, those silver-white threads changed direction, heading straight for the Girl in the painting.
The Girl in the painting was eager to jump and grab the giant mask, but seeing it turn towards her, she instinctively brought out her paper toys. Though some paper props were mixed in, none were high-level props, and with her ability, she could handle one-on-one protection—yet the paper props were pierced within a second, offering almost no obstacle to the silver-white threads.
The Girl in the painting had already dropped the box she was holding; she didn’t dodge the threads, but directly manipulated the pierced paper props to wrap tightly around the threads and forcefully sink them downward, changing their direction.
However, at that moment, another thread stabbed from above her, and the Girl in the painting tilted her head to take it head-on, but the tremendous force slammed her face down to the ground.
The silver-white threads obviously couldn’t pass through her head, but the impact of her occiput hitting the floor made her expression grow darker. Grabbing the silver-white thread pressing against her face, she yanked fiercely downward, causing the giant head mask floating on the theater ceiling to descend two meters!
Meanwhile, Xu Huo, who was also constantly under attack by the silver-white threads, seized the opportunity to leap up, and the Black Blade fiercely slashed at the giant head mask—a strike with all his might, but the blade seemed to sink into flowing water. Not only was there a subtle buoyancy supporting the blade, but the sharp edge didn’t carve any mark on the mask.
Quickly extricating himself from the coiled-up mask, Xu Huo, perched on a chairback, discovered he was already surrounded by silver-white threads. These threads all emanated from beneath the giant head mask, but after the previous attack, they now covered the theater’s stage, seats, and aisles, turning into a chaotic web!
And just as he stood on the chairback, all the threads began to draw in towards the mask, slicing the entire theater into disorderly fragments like countless cutting blades!
Xu Huo swung his hand downward, and the gravity induced by the Bone Ring pressed everything around him viciously to the ground, a cacophony of cracking sounds ensued. Chairs broke, the floor cracked, and even the stage and the rear dressing rooms completely collapsed. The silver-white threads, though pinned to the ground by the giant head mask, managed to move slowly under such pressure.
Sensing some threads entering the theater’s underground, Xu Huo turned, grabbed one of the Girl in the painting’s legs, dragged her out from under the threads, and transported them out of the theater via an opening. A box, miraculously intact and in perfect condition, followed them.
The moment their feet hit the ground, the theater collapsed fully behind them—a few barely noticeable silver-white threads shot up from the theater’s middle, towards the sky, then swiftly retracted, leaving no further motion.
The giant head mask had vanished.
However, this didn’t mean the crisis was over, as ghost face masks started flying out from the surrounding buildings.
Scanning the floating, head-like objects, Xu Huo shook the Black Blade in his hand and said coldly, "I really want to see just how many masks there are here!"
The Girl in the painting, also clad in a Mechanical Suit Set, wore multiple layers of transparent helmets to avoid attracting too much attention. These weren’t exceptionally high-grade props, mainly adding layers to her head to appear larger, preventing the ghost face mask from swallowing it easily. Carrying a large and a small backpack, the box she originally held was now carried by a Paper Flying Bird, freeing her hands to wield a long and a short prop sword, she charged forward as if entering an uninhabited realm.